Feefo Reviews

A client recently asked me to review Feefo and in particular its benefits from an SEO standpoint. I knew little about it up to that point but found it interesting enough to decide to make it the subject of my next (this) blog post.

Although Feefo is first and foremost about reviews, it also has big implications for content marketing and SEO and also for the financial performance that a business can achieve, in terms of return on investment, from using Google AdWords, Google’s paid advertising service.

So, What is Feefo?

Feefo is an independent online review system. Independence is claimed because the reviews are generated by Feefo and not the trading business (which I’m going to refer to as the ‘shop’ from now on to avoid confusion over which business I’m referring to). This independence means the reviews should be able to be trusted more than reviews that are generated by the shop and published on its own website. More about the independence, later.

How Does Feefo Work?

After the shop makes a sale or supplies a service, the shop periodically provides certain customer contact data to Feefo which enables Feefo to contact the customer by email and invite them to leave a review about their experience. This data can be supplied to Feefo in a number of ways, ranging from manual to automatic feed. After Feefo emails the customer, the review is supplied by the customer direct to Feefo who publish it on the Feefo domain so the review is therefore not under the control of the shop.

How Do You Set Feefo Up?

There are two options for installing Feefo on a shop’s website. Some shops use both methods concurrently and others choose just one of them. The quickest and simplest is to install a short piece of JavaScript code in the shop’s website pages which generates a pop-up window displaying the Feefo reviews to the shopper.

Method 1
This is the method chosen by my customer and the screenshot below shows how it looks on their page about glazing tools.

You can click on the image to get a much bigger version.

Feefo badge on the Wholesale Glass Company

When you click on the badge, you get a pop-up window the top section of which looks like this.

Feefo pop-up display

The bottom half of the pop-up window displays a list of all the individual reviews. These reviews allow for the shop owner to respond to the reviews and each review also has a link back to the relevant product page on the shop.

Feefo pop-up display

Method 2
An alternative to the JavaScript pop-up method above, is to include the reviews as part of the permanent content of the shop’s page. This has been done by notonthehighstreet.com and has several advantages. Firstly pop-ups can be an annoying distraction. Secondly, there is a small chance that a visitor will leave the shop to read the reviews and not return. By hosting the reviews on the shop’s domain, there is no need for the shopper to leave the page he is viewing. There may be an additional benefit to Google rankings from having the content on the shop’s pages as well as on Feefo.com but since this would be a duplicate of the content already hosted on Feefo, I’m not clear whether having the content existing in two places instead of just one actually provides an incremental ranking benefit.

Feefo method 2 on notonthehighstreet.com

What Are The Main Benefits of Feefo and Reviews?

1. Conversion rates. Trust, or lack of it, is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome in converting a browser into a shopper and the presence of independent, trusted reviews can increase conversion rates enormously. In the world of online reviews “bad” is the new “good”. Nobody expects 100% perfect reviews and indeed the existence of perfect reviews is likely to be viewed with some scepticism. Bad reviews are usually seen as opportunities by enlightened busines owners these days. Bad reviews as well as good reviews can help to engender trust for different reasons.
2. Reputation management and brand protection. Providing a mechanism for your customers to leave reviews means that you can respond, address any valid concerns that particular customer has whilst in addition accumulating, from all reviews, invaluable feedback about how you might improve your business. Far better to have a bad review on a site where you can reply rather than find that frustrated customers have left reviews on other sites or on social media where you don’t have access to be able to comment. The fact that a shop owner replies to customer complaints will be seen by other shoppers as a sign that the owner genuinely cares about quality of service.
3. Better AdWords campaigns. After a certain number of reviews have been acquired, you can have gold stars displayed by Google as part of your AdWords ads and this can improve click through rates, improve ad positions, reduce costs and therefore increase return on investment of AdWords campaigns.
4. SEO benefits. Ever since the Panda updates were announced by Google, ‘content became king’ in the world of SEO. But trusted content probably became ace. Many large ecommerce sites that had thousands of product pages with very little original or in depth content suddenly lost a lot of traffic. The challenge for those sites was how to create content for all those product pages without employing an army of content writers. User generated content such as reviews provide the perfect solution. The reviews are in essence content that works well from an SEO standpoint. The content is unique, it’s highly relevant to the product (since it’s on or linked to the product page and is about the product) and is trusted. This is like the perfect SEO content outsourcing solution for product pages. Notonthehighstreet.com had 229,957 reviews at time of writing. That’s a vast amount of content, automatically populating the deep pages of the shopping site. The reviews will not only help those pages rank better but they will convert better and improve any AdWords campaigns.

Feefo summary stats for notonthehighstreet.com

Are The Reviews Totally Independent and Trustworthy?

When there is so much at stake, there are always those who will try and manipulate the system. Perhaps, the one achilles heel of this system is that the shop owner could filter the email addresses he supplies to Feefo. Technically, it would be possible not to supply contact details of any customer that was known to have had a bad experience e.g. late delivery, damaged goods etc. in an attempt to improve ratings.

Who’s Feefo Best For?

Feefo really comes into its own when deployed on very large ecommerce shopping sites. However, there is no reason why it can not also be used by a service business or for that matter by businesses of any size in almost any sector.

I hope you found this post useful. If you did, why not help us to produce more content like it by sharing it on social media or even linking to it from your own blog? Feel free to comment below, especially if you’ve had experience of Feefo.

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I found this article very interesting and helpful. I am new to Feefo and am very impressed by their service. I am, however, a small company. My sticking point is what I see as cost per review. For the large ecommerce shopping sites this isn’t an issue. For small businesses it is a tough call balancing the monthly costs against the unknown return on investment, increased conversions and SEO benefits. The Bed and Breakfast Club markets bed and breakfast accommodation in private homes. As an accommodation provider, trusted reviews are paramount to our business. I have signed up with Feefo… Read more »

Hi Carol, I hope this reply is not too late to influence your decision. It’s my website and the Feefo review service that Ewan has described so well. I added Feefo to my website in March this year, the appeal for me was an article on their website describing how reviews, negative or positive could increase sales by increasing customer confidence. After reading a few testimonials ‘We put Feefo in about 18 months ago, it now ranks as probably the best initiative we tried’ – Iain Burgess, CEO of BVG Airflow, owner of Samuel Windsor & Clifford James, I was… Read more »

Hello Carol, Thanks for reading the post and taking the trouble to comment. Yes, it can be challenging weighing up the costs versus the benefits of any spending decision where the costs are certain and the benefits (specifically to your business) are not yet quantifiable. One of my sisters runs a 13 bedroom B&B and her experience of reviews (and review websites) is that they made an almost immediate noticeable difference to the number of enquiries and bookings for a number of reasons ranging from the obvious such as overcoming the ‘trust obstacle’ to generating direct referrals from the review… Read more »

From a consumer point of view this system does not work. I left poor feedback for a company and they replied stating that they would look into it and contact me. This they have failed to do despite several more e mails to them. I am unable to update my feedback. The only option after the company has replied is to withdraw your feedback so it now looks like they have responded to my complaint and all is well. Nothing could be further from the truth. From a consumer point of view it cannot be trusted. It is just a… Read more »

I can understand your desire to continue the dialogue on Feefo with the company in question but the system did allow you to register negative feedback so worked to that extent, didn’t it? I’m just wondering what might be the outcome if dissatisfied customers were able to continue their correspondence indefinitely on Feefo. There has to be a limit doesn’t there, if it’s to be useful to other users?

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5 years ago

Guest

Dave Valsler

You have hit the nail on the head. Is it useful to other users? For it to be of use to consumers it has to be open and trustworthy. If the system is controlled by the company – which it is and the company has the last word – which it does it is of no more use than a testimonial page which any company can do themselves without paying a third party. Whilst there has to be a limit on correspondence surely it should be possible for the consumer to report back after the company has commented to show… Read more »

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5 years ago

Guest

M Dundas

The principle of Feefo is the organisations they partner agree that all customers can leave feedback, irrelevant if this is postive,negative etc. I approached Feefo as I wanted to leave negative feedback about a company I bought a product from, basically after several years I still haven’t received the product. The company is Auctionair and I am now taking legal action. I approached Feefo to leave this feedback and they refused as I apparently had to receive the product before leaving feedback…….yet I have paid for it. So I can’t leave feedback/advise other potential customers that this could happent to… Read more »

Hi M Dundas, Interesting point. I’m not familiar with the legal aspects but if I were to comment as a layman (read that as a “CMA clause”), I suspect it’s not within the scope of Feefo’s proposition to deal with feedback about a service where that service has not actually been received. I think Feefo’s purpose is to provide a voice to consumers who have actually received a service and can therefore rate that service. I found this a few minutes ago and point 2 looks significant to me. http://www.feefo.com/en/en/page/The+feefo+system A remedy for your complaint against Auctionair might require a… Read more »

I can see both sides to this argument, but I tend to agree that Feefo isn’t everyone’s idea of perfection. For example, my husband bought my engagement ring from a company that uses Feefo, and buyers are encouraged to leave feedback five days after the purchase. There are two clear flaws here. First, the person who is going to use the product isn’t the one reviewing it. And second, the vast majority of people haven’t proposed within five days of receiving the ring. My husband left a glowing review prior to his proposal only to discover the diamond would come… Read more »

Hi Claire, Thanks for making some interesting points there. Would it not have been possible for you to leave the review yourself some weeks or even months later then? Is there a time limit for leaving a review? I agree that no system or review system is ever perfect but I think they still serve a useful purpose, so we’re better off with them than without them in general terms. I suppose whenever a review is left, there is always the possibility that one might want to modify that review at a later date. When leaving reviews in Google+, one… Read more »

Duplicate content is an issue, it appears that feefo use rel canonical pointing to our site from the review pages however if I search for a review from what the customer types in to google feefo outranks our site.

Also feefo has no seo benefit as far as i can see as our rankings seem to have dropped further since installing site reviews which could be to do with this duplicate content, we may be seen as a scraper.

Hi Andy, Very interesting. I did a few test searches just now using some fairly random phrases from within some of your reviews and sometimes found Feefo at number 1 with your site – keepitpersonal.co.uk – ranking lower down but on other occasions found your site to be the only result i.e. Feefo didn’t rank at all, never mind above you. I wonder whether it might just depend on other (ranking) characteristics of the page in question i.e. sometimes Feefo’s page is more relevant in google’s view and sometimes it’s yours. I noted Feefo’s usage of the rel canonical element… Read more »

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4 years ago

Guest

Denise

This is a very interesting article as I have myself recently contacted Feefo. I received shocking service from a company who uses them and I reviewed them online. They responded to the review and used Feefo to almost boast about their 5/5 rating with them, so how could I possibly have received bad service? I contacted them again but I also contacted Feefo to advise them I felt that companies were paying for a better rating and would prioritise Feefo customers over the likes of myself. My main point was why should I receive worse service simply because I had… Read more »

Hi Denise, what was it about your experience that led you to believe that companies were paying for a better rating and also that the level of service you received from the company was in any way connected with whether you had used Feefo or not?

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4 years ago

Guest

Denise

Hi Ewan, as the company had specifically mentioned Feefo, when they responded on my review, it made me want to review them on Feefo. I knew nothing about Feefo so checked their website and it appeared to be an open 3 way purchase between the consumer, seller and Feefo. Everyone was aware of the sale and the company knows in advance it will be rated. All this can ensure priority to those purchased with Feefo and as such provide excellent service and for a fee, “protect their rating”. It makes it all about the money and takes online reviewing to… Read more »

Hi, Denise: I realize I’m late to this discussion, but what you’re saying doesn’t really make sense. As a company that contracts with Feefo, I’m required, as part of the contract, to provide them with ALL my customers’ sales. Every one. I’m only allowed to omit duplicate customers (as my services are rated, not the product–I sell a service). I don’t understand how you perceive using Feefo as “protecting” someone’s rating. You leave a bad rating on Feefo, and it affects the company’s ranking. It’s not as though you were precluded from leaving bad reviews in other places, as well;… Read more »

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3 years ago

Guest

Julian

I have just had message from Google on Webmaster tools citing a link from Feefo as being an example of an unnatural link and so contributing to a manual penalty. It is a perfectly normal customer review.

Is the link from Feefo just one item in a list of possible suspect links provided by Google (in which case it might just have been accidentally tarred with the same brush as the other links) or has it been specifically identified?

Either way, the answer to your question can only be no.

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4 years ago

Guest

Denise

Hello Hitch, It was good to hear your comments as it made me think about the subject again and this is purely my opinion based on personal experience as a consumer. I purchased a child’s Christmas present. It broke within one month of using it. I tried to contact the company who refused liability. In return I published my review which was challenged publicly by the company with incorrect information, advised I was out with any warranty and proceeded to question why I had a complaint when they had a 5 star rating on Feefo? I had never heard of… Read more »

Hi, Denise: Well, obviously, if a company selectively does not pass on a customer’s information, Feefo can’t contact them. I know also that some servers block the Feefo emails. I have a customer that wants her feedback form (to give us a good review, thank heavens), and she can’t get it because she’s on Comcast. Nothing works, to get it to her. Nobody else has this issue, but Comcast certainly does. There’s no such thing as a perfect system. Those of us who are on the Net as businesspeople are at the mercy of the truly corrupt review sites–you know… Read more »

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3 years ago

Guest

enrique f

I am writing as a consumer of products by Feefo monitored companies. My experience is that I never received Feefo’s emails for ratings. Also, I have noticed that some companies boast of a 90 per cent Feefo satisfaction rate. Then, you go to the Feefo website, and the reality is that the real number is 60. Evidently Feefo does not police what companies say with their data, if they are not correctly displayed. Feefo works for the companies, not for the consumers. The problem is that they are eroding their credibility with the consumer, to the point that soon the… Read more »

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3 years ago

Guest

Bob Ross

After our recent dealings with Feefo I feel so aggrieved as to write a comment on our experiences. We contacted Feefo just before Christmas 2015 in response to their free trial offer. We needed to sign up before the end of December and with holidays etc access to our website provider ( we use a well known template website provider) or Feefo’s technical team we were assured that we could try Feefo for free. My concerns were about ease of intergration and as a small one man band did we have enough turnover to make Feefo pay. Our first mistake… Read more »

Hi, Bob: Wow. My experience–and I’ve had Feefo for about a year now–is completely different. I don’t know what you mean when you say that you use a “well known template website provider” for your website, unless you mean something like Squarespace or Wix, or possibly, what, a WordPress.org site? Something that you don’t really control, is that what you mean? In any event, you *do* realize that you don’t have to use Javascript–right? There are three different ways to integrate Feefo, and I used the first method, the simple “link” method, for months, and it worked fine. All you… Read more »